March 2023 HVAC Demand Trends - SEO Edition
👋 Hey, Jon here. I want to start by again thanking everyone for reading this weekly e-mail newsletter. So many of you have shared these articles and readership continues to grow beyond what I’d ever expected. I’m humbled and am looking forward to bringing you more great data.
This week’s newsletter is a deep dive into SEO / organic revenue performance from March 1st - March 30th looking at over 3,000 leads.
Shout out to Josh Crouch (and his team) at Relentless Digital, who recently adopted our revenue analytics solution for his clients, which led to some of these great insights below. Josh has been a wonderful partner and leader in the space, so he deserves a big shout out here.
With that, let’s dive into some SEO data!
SEO Lead Volume Dropped 1.5% Month-Over-Month
Month-over-month, lead volume from organic channels dropped by 1.5% (which is in-line from what we’ve seen from paid channels).
But by know you know that lead volume only tells a small part of the story.
While the number of sold customers dropped by 4%, average tickets were up 30% and this significantly impacted revenue opportunities from SEO for the month of March.
Let’s dive a little deeper:
Revenue Potential Driven by SEO Increased 39% Month-Over-Month
We define revenue potential as the sum of revenue from sold (scheduled) jobs, closed (complete) jobs, and open estimates (we take the average of all provided estimates so there’s no double counting) to help you understand the total opportunity a particular marketing channel drove for your business.
For SEO specifically, closed revenue was down 3% month-over-month, but sold revenue was up 181% and estimates were up 70% month-over-month:
Unsold Estimates: ⬆️ 70%
Sold Jobs: ⬆️ 181%
Closed Jobs: ⬇️ 3%
Lead volume was largely unchanged, and there were fewer sold customers, but at much higher average tickets, the revenue opportunity picture looks a lot more positive and indicates even stronger performance coming for April given the sold revenue in the pipeline.
In this data sample, every $1 spent on SEO management services, generated $35 in revenue potential created.
SEO Drove a 14.5x Return on Investment (Closed Revenue)
When we measure return on investment, we are specifically looking at closed and completed jobs that occurred in the time-frame we are reporting on.
In this case, every $1 spent on SEO returned $14.50 in closed revenue.
Here’s how that breaks out by organic channel:
Google Business Profile (GMB) - 91.45% of total closed revenue
Google Organic - 7.58% of total closed revenue
Bing Organic - 1% of total closed revenue
Facebook Organic - 0.47% of total closed revenue
Google My Business / Google Business profile was by far the dominant revenue driver from organic channels.
The takeaway?
GMB / GBP is very valuable digital real estate - treat is as such!
It Cost $110.53 to Acquire a Paying Customer From SEO
Because there is no advertising spend on SEO, to measure return on investment and customer acquisition costs, we use management fees as the “spend” number.
Across this sample, it cost $110.53 to get a paying customer from SEO directly.
It’s also worth noting that 33% of SEO leads matched to a new opportunity in the CRM, and 22.5% of SEO leads turned into a paying customer (with a new job after the lead date).
This is a good benchmark to use within your own business, to make sure your teams are converting those leads into revenue opportunities for your business.
52% of SEO Closed Revenue Was From New Customers
Just because someone is searching for your brand name doesn’t mean that they have done business with you before.
When looking at customer journeys in our data, we sometimes see that a prospect will initially discover a business via unbranded search terms (PPC), but will then go back and Google the brand name to check out the reviews before contacting the business from GMB.
This again highlights the importance of a strong Google Business Profile, reviews, content and the right information because those are customers you don’t want to lose as they are in the final moments of deciding which business to contact in a moment of need.
Interestingly enough, though, existing customers in this sample spent 61% more per average job than new customers.
Until next time . . .
-Jon